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Comment by A_D_E_P_T | Hacker News Reader

I've got one word for you: Potash.

Hugely important for agriculture, barely produced in the US at all, mostly imported from Canada.

If Canada retaliates by barring or limiting potash exports, it would be so harmful to the American agriculture sector that Trump would go ballistic.

> They can and will move to the US because of these tariffs.

That's a lot easier said than done, and as US policies might change at any time -- it's a coin-flip what'll be the case in four years -- they'll probably just decide to wait it out and let US consumers eat the tax.

Seriously, you might think it's easy to relocate, e.g., a car manufacturing plant, but it sure ain't...

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Potash is important yes. Canada also imports a majority of our fruit and vegetables from the US. Over 90% of our leafy greens come from the US. We already have a massive cost of living crisis. And I'm not sure if American commentators have been paying attention to our economy or not but Canada's GDP per capita has gone down for 6 straight quarters.

And here's the analysis from the Bank of Canada: https://www.bankofcanada.ca/publications/mpr/mpr-2025-01-29/...

I know commentators want to stick it to Trump but Canada's economy has been in a bad place for years and this isn't good for us at all...

I don't think anyone is saying it won't hurt Canada; trade wars hurt both sides. The discussion is whether Canada can make it hurt Trumps supporters enough to pressure him to remove the tariffs.

My perspective is as a Canadian. The US GDP per capita is 7% above pre-Covid numbers, Canada's is 2% below. Or you can say our GDP per capita has diverged by 9% since COVID. Canada's cost of living is actually untenable right now. Canada can't hold the line long enough to do anything to the US.

We'll do it for political reasons until the election this year but it's going to decimate our economy even further.

Cost of living in Canada has been untenable for the past decade. The choice is to bend the knee or suffer more with the hopes you’ll at least go down with pride. I have no idea how the hell the government across the border got their citizens to start hating on us within a couple of weeks.

They didn’t. The vast majority of Americans don’t hate Canadians. You don’t need a popular referendum to set tariffs, the president can just do it. One of the many downsides of electing a crazy person as president.

Fair, apologies for having a knee-jerk reaction to it. It just sucks to scroll a tiny bit on forums and get bombarded with pure hate. I understand that it doesn’t represent the majority, but makes you scratch your head and think why so many level headed people are willing to throw away trust that was built throughout decades. Like I get the whole America First approach, and understand the desire to build out the manufacturing locally… but is it worth it to turn away all of your allies and make them get closer with the actual super power that wants to dethrone you?

To be fair Canada and most of the EU haven't come close to fulfillment our NATO requirements since, well, ever. For better or worse most of the free world freeloads off the US' security shield.

Canada is especially egregious, where we have a bunch of tariffs and regulations protecting certain Canadian corporations while expecting the US to protect us and buy our products. All the while smugly criticizing them for it.

US gets unquestionable currency dominance from US' security shield. Don't get me wrong, but if that was a real concern, they would've started the tariff war 4, 6, 8 years ago. Economical and political headwinds are showing potential Chinese dominance across all manufacturing and export industries. This is the actual time when US is being threatened and trying to bully others, because they can't fix the problem themselves.

> To be fair Canada and most of the EU haven't come close to fulfillment our NATO requirements since, well, ever. For better or worse most of the free world freeloads off the US' security shield.

USA is only country that used article 5. Other NATO countries served USA til now not other way around. But it seems that this will end soon. At least in EU, where pro-Russian parties are gaining power.

The threat of article 5 is powerful... It's the only thing that's prevented Russia from rolling through the Baltics.

> To be fair Canada and most of the EU haven't come close to fulfillment our NATO requirements since, well, ever.

Which requirements are those?

I'm aware of an agreed 2% GDP target for 2024, which we've reached. Are there other requirements we haven't reached?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/defence-spending-two-percen...

Lol we haven't reached it and Trudeau's timeline wasn't anywhere close to 2024. We only reached ~1.3% of GDP.

Sorry, I was referring to the EU, not Canada. Should have added that.

But if I understand the requirements correctly, it was never about every country reaching 2%, only a majority. Has that not been reached?

What forums are you on where you’re reading pure hate for Canadians?

sentiment differences are powerful though -- some Americans might rally behind Trump, but if cost of living goes up significantly they won't be patient about it, especially given it's clear that Trump started this whole thing.

meanwhile -- excepting those who CAN'T, for whom there may well be govt assistance -- Canadians are angry and will endure (relatively more) pain to prove a point.

not saying I want this outcome, but I think the willingness to endure pain to harm the opposing party is different in each country.

You also have to account for how much Trump cares about his supporters vs how much any Canadian politician with sufficient power to act cares about their supporters. Trump is already elected, so whatever self-interested concern he had for his supporters is gone. I doubt Canadian politicians, with an election looming, are as willing to throw their supporters under the bus.

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